Would you ride the Tour du Danger?

Last Saturday in London, a sort of sight-seeing-tour-by-bike took place, riding a pre-mapped route to view London’s 10 most dangerous places for cyclists.

London has many of the same problems with road design that New Zealand cities have – road networks and blackspots that encourage people in cars to drive aggressively and that are flat out dangerous for anyone on a bike or on foot. And here in Wellington it’s not just the driving that is aggressive and dangerous, it’s the parking too.

For example, the angle parking at Oriental Bay, Thorndon Quay, Kilbirnie and other places is dangerous for both the people on the road and the people backing out of the parks. I’m told that WCC rejected reversing the angle of the car parks on Oriental Parade because people would complain that it was too hard to park.

Giving in because people would complain? Is that a good reason? My answer would have to be “It’s about road safety. Deal with it.” and I don’t see why the Council didn’t say the same thing. Road safety trumps all else, doesn’t it..?

Anyway, back to the Tour du Danger. Unsurprisingly, Londoners are sick of the situation and took to the streets by the thousand to say so. People went with their kids, their parents, their friends, and their organisations. Along the way, they took time to remember the riders killed and injured at the blackspots. The idea and execution of the Tour seems to have been a smashing success.

What do you think of the concept? If there was a Tour du Danger here, would you ride out on it?

There will be an official list I’m sure (or at least the data to make one), but to some extent a real-world list would have to be compiled by cyclists.

There are some obvious blackspots, but there are also places that haven’t any great number of serious incidents associated with them – because most people won’t ride there. Jervois Quay springs to mind.

Yeah, I think it’s worth highlighting that the City Council is actually taking some action here. So while, for example, they’re not making Oriental Bay reverse angle parking, they did implement a clearway along Thorndon Quay in the mornings – which has made it much safer. As Patrick says, if we can use this as a way of pointing out achievable, cost-effective safety improvements, that’s more likely to get implemented.

As far as Thorndon Quay goes, I don’t get why the green for the cycle lane is only painted over the driveways. It would be clearer if it was painted all the way along all cycle lanes. Then there’d be less confusion, particularly for people parking around Oriental/Point Jerningham/Evans Bay.